New SEO theory?

[James]

Sure I read this somewhere but can't find the article, but ...

There is a theory that if you link TO sites with a high page rank, it positively affects your own page rank. So it's not all about INBOUND links, but high quality OUTBOUND links too.

So, if I were to link to freefoto.com or istockphoto.com (both higher page ranks than mine) from my homepage, would I see my own popularity increase?

I was a bit sceptical until I did a search for james barker on Google. My university homepage is second yet james barker is only mentioned once and the page has zero inbound links! This got me thinking that it is the link to freedigitalphotos.net (page rank 6) that is giving the james barker homepage the high results listing. If so, it proves the above theory.

That said, francis storr, james glasheen, shushan mannan, steve bawa and ronald ng searches also appear top, but these names are not as common as james barker so not sure if this conclusively blows my theory away or not?

Perhaps it's just because websitearchitecture.co.uk is quite popular?

I can feel some experimentation coming on.

Any comments?

[David]

Hmm. On the face of it, it doesn't sound sensible. In order to get a high page rank, all you need is a page with lots of links to other high ranking sites? There has to be more to it than that. Certainly it's worth some experimentation but you would probably need a new domain in order to eliminate as many influences as possible...

...but if you do that, how does Google find the new site unless it's linked to from elsewhere?

Catch22